Across Colorado, dozens of families look for missing children

About half an hour after midnight on July 15, 1986, Gil and Bernice Abeyta said good night to their blue-eyed baby boy, Christopher, got into their bed some 10 feet from the crib, and went to sleep.

They never saw Christopher again.

Sometime between when the Abeytas went to bed and 6:30 the next morning, someone apparently opened the unlocked front door to their house on a quiet Colorado Springs corner, crept up the stairs to their bedroom, and took their 7-month-old son.

Christopher, if he is alive, and if that is still his name, would be 27 now. His mom, dad and six brothers and sisters have never stopped looking for him. For years the family collected tips on its own 800 number. They set up a Find Christopher website and Facebook page, each displaying an artist's idea of how that bald baby would look as a man. And there is a message from his family that is a poignant blend of hopeand the recognition that too much time has passed for things ever to be normal again:

"We understand he is an adult and it would be difficult to comprehend learning that he was stolen years ago. We will not disrupt his life, but he has the right to know he has a family who has searched and searched for him for many years."

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Across Colorado, dozens of families are looking for missing children. Some have been searching for months, some, like the Abeytas, for decades. For some, it can be hard to convince investigators to go after very cold leads, hard to keep hoping, harder still to give up hope. And then one morning, they turn on the TV and hear that in Cleveland, three women, teenagers when they disappeared a decade ago, had been found. Alive.

Jon Haynes photo is shown. He was last known to be traveling in a beige 1981 Subaru hatchback with California license plates 1CPK105. He was last known to be in Nederland, Colorado, and is missing under suspicious circumstances. (Handout)

The case in Ohio certainly offers hope to not only families of missing children but also law enforcement, said Susan Medina, spokeswoman for the Colorado Bureau of Investigation.

It did, indeed.

"Everything that took place in Cleveland, it just made everyone here in the department hopeful," said Mike Montez, a Colorado Springs detective who is now in charge of the Abeyta investigation.

There are the two girls, Yvonne Mestas and Victoria Sanchez, both 15 and both snatched off a street in tiny Rocky Ford as they walked home from a school function in November 1982.

There are the three teenage boys, Roger Ellison, Christopher Harvey and Jon Haynes, who vanished separately in the early 1980s, in scattered rural areas of the state.

There is Jonelle Matthews, who was dropped off by a friend at her Greeley home one December night in 1984. When her parents got home an hour later, Jonelle was gone and has never been found.

And there is Anthony Moya, whose mother told police she and 2-year-old Anthony were napping in their Lakewood apartment in 1989. When she woke up, she said, Anthony was gone.

Roger Ellison. He was last seen in the morning at the Cedaredge High School, but did not attend any classes that day. His hair is dark blonde. FOUL PLAY SUSPECTED. (Handout)

Dennis Goodwin was a Lakewood detective, assigned to investigate crimes against children, that June morning.

He thinks it's unlikely the toddler opened the front door and made it down the apartment complex stairs by himself.

"We had all the resources, canines and bloodhounds, and we searched the area," Goodwin said. "We just really didn't come up with any trace."

They pursued all kinds of theories, that he was abused, that someone snatched him, that he was sold. Goodwin stayed in touch with Anthony's mother, and the mother's boyfriend, for years, hoping one of them might remember some overlooked detail.

Goodwin, who is now police chief at Arapahoe Community College, said his training and experience tell him Anthony is probably not alive.

"But," he said, "in Cleveland they were saying the same thing. You can't give up. You hope."

You also use new technologies that weren't around, or weren't commonplace, when Anthony and Christopher and Jonelle and many others disappeared.

There have been huge advancements in DNA and other trace evidence examinations. And there is the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, with its nationwide database, and which now often sends its own investigators to lend expertise when a child disappears.

There have also been improvements with fingerprint comparison, Medina said.

Of course, none of that helps if investigators don't know where to look for a missing child.

But while time's passing hinders searches in some ways — details are forgotten, witnesses move away or die — it doesn't necessarily mean a case is dead.

"What I will tell you is we constantly get tips on (Christopher's) case," said Montez. "Constantly."

Christopher was one of those little surprises life sometimes serves up, arriving as he did years after the Abeytas thought they had moved on from diapers and midnight feedings. He joined a noisy household full of six kids—the youngest, his sister Denise, was 15 years older. He immediately became everybody's darling, his teenaged brothers and sisters cooing over him, tossing him in the air, even helping feed him.

It was that house full of teenagers and their comings and goings that caused the Abeytas to leave the front door unlocked. "None of us had keys," said Denise Alvez, Christopher's sister.

For years, Bernice Abeyta was a full-time investigator, traveling not just up and down the Front Range but across the country every time someone phoned a supposed sighting of her son into the family's or the police tip line.

Now, her parents are in their 70s, and they're tired, so Alvez has taken over as chief investigator.

Twenty six years later, Alvez remembers every detail of that July morning. Her mother, frantically running through the house, searching, crying. She remembers helping her mother, who had just gotten out of bed, get dressed because the police were on their way and watching her mother try to open a clothes drawer and, in her distress, dumping its contents on the floor. Years later, she learned the police, when they photographed the Abeytas' bedroom, initially saw that overturned drawer as evidence of a different kind of frantic activity, the kind that pointed to her parents as suspects.

Alvez is on good terms with Montez; she talks with him almost weekly. But she still is angry over how the case was handled initially, when police focused on her parents and ignored other suspects, including the woman the Abeytas are convinced took Christopher.

That woman, Alvez said, had an appetite for married men and a penchant for harassing them and their families after the relationship ended.

Gil Abeyta was involved with the woman briefly, and broke things off not long before Christopher vanished.

Alvez said she doesn't remember exactly how long it took before the family could sit down to a meal or celebrate a holiday again after Christopher disappeared, but some milestones stand out.

"I can remember very well we went to a movie — 'La Bamba' — it was the first time we'd gone to a movie. I remember we came out and Mom was crying and Dad had a couple tears, because we felt like, why are we living our life?"

That movie came out a full year after Christopher vanished.

Eventually, she said, "You create a normalcy. When a lead or sighting comes in, Mom and Dad drop everything, but you have to go on with life."

The Abeytas believe Christopher is alive, living with some family that wanted a child and had no idea the one they adopted was stolen.

Montez cautiously shares that opinion. "We as a police department are hopeful that he's alive. Nothing indicates that he's not."

So they keep looking, as they have done for 26 years, Alvez said. "Because you don't know what happened to him. That's what motivates you to keep going."

Christopher Abeyta was taken from his crib, which was in his parents bedroom, sometime between midnight and 6:30 a.m. Parents had left the front door unlocked so the older kids - six of them all quite a bit older, could come and go.

Robert was 4 months old when he went missing in Parker. No photos were available when he was reported missing. The photo on the left is a composite drawing of how he may have looked at age 9 and the photo on the right is a composite drawing of how he may look at age 23. Robert was originally missing with his sister, but she was later found. Robert's mother had given her to a family in Louisiana. Police suspect either the mother or her boyfriend killed Robert but he has never been found.

Jennifer was last seen riding a new, boy's-style black Univega 12-speed bicycle in the 2500 block of Albion St. in Denver's Park Hill neighborhood. Jennifer's eyes are blue-green and she has curly hair.

Roger's photo is shown age-progressed to 48 years. He was last seen in the morning at the Cedaredge High School, but did not attend any classes that day. His hair is dark blonde. Police suspect foul play.

Christopher's photo is shown age-progressed to 42 years. He disappeared from a summer home 17 miles northwest of Pagosa Springs, Colorado. He has a small mole on his right arm, left arm and upper right chest.

Jon's photo is shown age progressed to 48 years. He was last known to be traveling in a beige 1981 Subaru hatchback with California license plates 1CPK105. He was last known to be in Nederland, Colorado, and is missing under suspicious circumstances.

Jonelle's photo is shown age-progressed to 31 years. She was dropped off at her parents' home at 8:30 p.m. Her parents returned at 10:00 p.m. and she had disappeared. She has braces on her teeth, pierced ears and scars on her chin. She was last seen wearing a light blue ski coat, a red blouse, a dark gray sweater vest, a gray skirt, and house slippers.

Victoria's photo is shown age-progressed to 45 years. She was last seen on November 1, 1982 in Rocky Ford, Colorado. She was with Yvonne Mestas, who is also still missing. Victoria suffered from a broken elbow and has a surgical scar on her left arm which runs from the wrist to the inside of her elbow. Her nickname is Vicki.

Elizabeth's photo has been age-progressed to 41 years. She went for her morning jog on August 16, 1983 and has not been seen since. She had no money or extra clothing. She was last seen wearing white jogging shorts, a faded blue T-shirt, and running shoes. She has a mole on the right side of her face above her eyebrow. She answers to "Beth."

Anthony and his mother were sleeping on the living room couch at approximately 8:30 a.m. His mother woke up at 8:45 a.m., the child was gone and the front door was open. He has a dark complexion, dimples on his face, a scar on the back of his left leg, and blue birthmarks on his buttocks and back. He was last seen wearing yellow pajama bottoms.

Sarah's photo is show age-progressed to 22 years. She was last believed to be in the company of her father, Paul C. Skiba and his employee, Lorenzo Chivers. Sarah has a red mark on the bridge of her nose. Lorenzo has a tattoo of a scorpion on his left forearm and a scar on his abdomen. Foul play is suspected.

Dylan lives in Colorado Springs but was last seen on November 19, 2012 during a court-ordered visit with his father. He was last seen wearing a black Nike shirt, black nylon basketball shorts, black Jordan tennis shoes and a two-toned blue and white Duke Blue Devils baseball hat.

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